The Genesis Of The Skins Game That Nearly Didn’t Happen

Here’s a terrific background story by John Ourand on Sportsbusinessdaily.com John Ourand about how the once popular Skins Game was born via an epiphany from then NBC exec Don Ohlmeyer. Like most great ideas though, it was hardly rubber-stamped by network suits to be such a hit–much less airing at all. Like any successful entrepreneur knows, its the dogged perseverance that matters.

On creating the Skins Game …

I was watching a golf tournament back in the early 1980s and looked at the leaderboard. I felt like I was watching Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Who are these guys?

I said to a friend of mine, “Can you imagine if there was a golf tournament and the leaderboard was Palmer, Player, Nicklaus and Watson? People would be calling their neighbors to watch.

The problem was that Palmer and Player couldn’t really play 72 holes with these guys anymore. But on any given hole? That’s where I came up with the idea of a skins match over 18 holes. I remembered as a kid playing skins and thought it could work. 

I talked to [Jack] Nicklaus and he was interested. He asked about appearance fees, which was something I had never thought about. 

“I don’t know, Jack. Should we?” I asked. 

“No, because if you pay us an appearance fee, it will just be viewed always as an exhibition. Whatever the prize money is, the prize money is. You’re talking about $360,000. That’s very attractive for a weekend of playing 18 holes,” he said.

[Arnold] Palmer was interested, too. I called Arnold and said, “Jack thinks there shouldn’t be an appearance fee.” 

Six weeks before the telecast, I still couldn’t get a network to license it. I finally decided to do it myself and did a time-buy on NBC for $1 million.

That’s when I went to IMG and brought in Barry Frank because I didn’t want to take the whole risk by myself. We made a deal to partner on it. Six weeks before the event, we were looking at losing up to $1.25 million. We put the pedal to the metal selling advertising and sold the last unit the Friday afternoon before the telecast. After busting our balls for a year, I think we ended up splitting $9,000.

It became one of the highest-rated golf telecasts of the year. After that, it was just name your price.

As they say, the rest is history…